🧗 A New Olympic Format 🥇

Howdy. FlashPumped here. We’re like that favourite juggy 6a, getting you all warmed-up for the weekend.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• A new Olympic format 🥇

• Stoking the 🔥 gets a repeat

• There’s something about Seb

• Roberts remains humble

Let’s swing into action

Paris 24 gets an Update

It seems that our prayers have been answered! 🙏

After all the boycotting, complaining and mayhem surrounding rock climbing’s debut appearance at the Tokyo 2000 Olympics, with its contentious combined format, it seems there will a revised version for 2024.

We now get twice as many medals 🥳

With the previous format, all athletes had to combine in all three events:

• Lead

• Bouldering

• Speed

And as we all know, Speed is not the favourite of the litter…

Some type of sophisticated formula was then used to conjure up an overall ranking, which no-one really seemed to understand.

But this is now a thing of the past!

The spruced-up new disciplines will be:

• Lead and Bouldering combined

• Speed

The ranking in Lead and Bouldering will be determined by simply adding together the points from each discipline. No more confusing us with your magicians formulas 🧙‍♂️

This means medals for each discipline and also an increase from 48 to 60 competing athletes.

This is great news.

Competitors will now be able to concentrate on the disciplines they’ve actually been practicing throughout their climbing careers. And perhaps rankings that make more sense 🤞

Stoking the Fire get a repeat 🔥

American climber Jonathan Siegrist has been in Catalunya and made a rare repeat of Chris Sharma’s Stoking the Fire, 9b 💪

This route has been described by pretty much each repeater as solid 9b and it made Big J dig deeper than for any of his other 9b’s:

• La Planta de Shiva

• Jumbo Love

• Peruvian Necktie

• Event Horizon

• And now Stoking the Fire

Adam Ondra described the route as the best 9b in Catalunya and it’s only seen ascents by Adam, Jakob Schubert, Sachi Amma, Stefano Ghisolfi and now Siegrist.

Well done Jonny! Can’t wait to see what you move onto next 👏 👏 👏

There’s something about Seb

Talking about 9b’s…

Earlier this month, our favourite Frenchman, Seb Bouin, The Undercover Crusher, The Missionary from Montpellier, clipped the chains of one of his many projects:

• Ariegeois Coeur Loyal, in Pic Saint-Loup 🇫🇷

Or ACL for short. Tis a bit easier…

This is on Seb’s home turf of Pic Saint-Loup, which hosts many of his other benchmark pieces including Beyond integral, 9b/+, and Kmira, 9a+.

Like many of his routes, it’s an enduro-pump fest. Two 20m 9a pitches with a rest in between.

Well done old boy. Or perhaps as they say: Allllllleez! 💪

Question of the Week

Last week we were on a mission to find out the go-to bouldering destination:

And we have a clear winner! Even if they all share a piece in our hearts 🥰

This week we’re looking at what’s your go-to belay device. Your belay BFF.

Roberts remains humble

One of the things you may have noticed about Aidan Roberts is how humble he is.

But just because he’s quieter on the social media monitor doesn’t mean he ain’t cooking up some madness.

Aidan co-host’s The Careless Talk Climbing Podcast with Sam Prior. They talk about existing projects, training and pretty much just a bit of pleasant banter.

And it’s on this page that a short blurb mentions Aidan flashing Momentum, a Nalle Hukkaitaval V14 😮

At V14 that would make it one of the hardest flashes EVER.

Which he drops in a footnote 😆

Love it 💙

Picks of the Week

• 📽 Will’s Journey. Great to hear more about someone who’s becoming one of the strongest climbers out there and his motivations between the competition scene and the outdoors.

• 📖 When all hope was nearly abandoned, an Indian climber was rescued from deep within a crevasse on Annapurna. The culprit? Rappelling off a broken rope 😖

Bacon & Waffles

🤣 🤣

What We’re Enjoyin’ 🫖

• 📽 Pete Whittaker and Sean Villanueva in Patagonia. What characters! 🤣

• 📖 Beastmaking. I’m dreaming of getting back on the fingerboard! (if the golfers elbow ever disappears 😫)

• 🎧 AI Drake & The Weeknd. It was generated by AI 😳

That's it for today. See y’all next week!